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Campeón Caído (Relato)
"Sire, we're now half a day's ride from border". Hearing his servant, the duke raised his hand, and the hunting party brought their sweating horses to a hall. "You were brought up in this forest, weren't you?" the duke asked his tracker. "Yes, sire", replied the man. "My father and I used to spend weeks hunting round here. That must have been - twenty years ago now. The forest was different then, more... normal. No ordinary trappers would dare risk this place now". The duke swung off his horse and stared ahead into the trees. Before them, the ground rose sharply. The great deciduous trees were starting to thin out, giving way to the conifers and shrubs of the mountains. "If the dogs can still follow the scent we'll ride for another hour, and if we haven't caught up with him by then, we'll turn home", he declared. "We can't risk spending the night here, it's too dangerous". The tracker held the duke's stirrup while he mounted, then the hunting party spurred their tired horses up the rocky slope, the dogs baying before them. ----------------------------------------- Mund the Minotaur stumbled to a halt and leant over, trying to catch his breath. The duke's men had been chasing him for three days now; and while they'd been able to commandeer fresh horses, he'd had to rely on his stamina. He was very tired now, coming to the end of his strength. He'd headed into the mountains, hoping that the winding, stony trails would slow down the horses. The influence of Chaos was stronger there - if they persevered, the hunters could well become the hunted. Then he heard the dogs. He hadn't thought the duke would risk coming so far. There was no alternative but to continue. If he left the path, they would have to dismount and go on foot. He worked his way up the stony slope grabbing onto bushes to keep his balance. He finally hauled himself to the top of the slope and spent a few minutes simply lying on the ground, panting. The steep climb had taken a lot out of him, and he realised, with sure fatalism, that he no longer had the strength to run. Standing up, he found himself at the top of a vertiginous cliff. Far beneath him lay a great round lake, sparkling green in the cold afternoon sun. The cliff edge was flat, there was nowhere he could make a stand. He bent down and picked up a rock and waited for the dogs to come. --------------------------------------- The duke's men toiled up the slope on foot after the Minotaur. The dogs were barking more and more, a sure sign they had nearly run down their quarry. The handlers released them, and they eagerly raced ahead, leaping and weaving round the stones and bushes. The first to reach the top of the slope, a huge black-spotted bitch, saw the waiting Minotaur and charged him. She was not quick wough. The Minotaur hurled the rock with unnerring accuracy and smashed her skull. The bitch was dead as she fell to the ground. The remaining dogs cautiously spread out to surround the Minotaur, and started closing on him. The hunting party breasted the slope to find the minotaur silhouetted on the cliff top against the pale yellow sky. Dead and dying dogs lay heaped around him. Minotaur blood seeped from his wounds, and dog's blood dripped from his horns. The duke drew his sword, the men drew their bow and they advanced. The minotaur backed right up to the edge of the cliff, till he could feel the emptiness beneath him. Giving a great bellow of despair and rage, he flung himself out into the air. The men raced forward to the cliff and watched the black speck of the minotaur's body spiralling downwards, until it finally met the water, and disappeared in a tiny flash of white. -------------------------------------- Water, blackness, green, then the swathe of unconsciousness. Strange voices swam by his head, then darted away. They were speaking to him, but he couldn't understand what the were saying. lmages brushed the edge of his understanding: he saw a glowing black stone, a curtain of water... When Mund opened his eyes the first thing he saw was the cliff towering above him, it seemed impossibly high. His body was cold and wet, and ached from the pain of many wounds, fresh and old. The green lake stretched out in front of him, little ruffles of movement occasionally disturbing its glassy surface. To his right, it spread out and become lost in trees. To his left the water butted against a rock face, were a tall waterfall spewed its waters into the lake. The rushing whiteness of the waterfall pulled at something in his memory. Curious, he wandered along the shore of the lake until he came to the rock face. There was no obvious way to traverse it, and the overhang made it too diffIcult to approach from above. That gave him no option but to swim. He lowered himself carefully into the ice-cold water, and waded over the slippery lake bottom to the wall. Holding onto the rock face with one hand, he started to pull himself through the water to the waterfall. He had to swim under the waterfall itself, and emerged coughing and spluttering on the other side. He found himself in a small round cave, dimly lit by light filtering through the waterfall. In the centre of the cave lay a round stone, glowing with darkness. It seemed to be calling to him. He grasped the stone firmly in his massive arms, and lifted it up. Waves of heat and cold flowed down his arms, his body and his legs, followed by pinprick flashes of pain. White sound reverberated through his brain, exploded out of his ears, his nose, his mouth. He shook his head from side to side in agony, and tried to drop the stone, but couldn't. "Mund, Mundl!" cried the white noise in his head, the sound blowing his mind apart. "You lack the courage, Mund, you lack the faith! We must find another Champion!" The stone wrenched itself from his arms and thudded onto the wet sand. Mund clasped his hands over his head as ripples of change swept over his body. His bones grew, pulling out into new shapes, bending, twisting, muscles and tendons stretching with them. Where his skin couldn't accommodate his altered shape, it tore apart. New limbs sprouted from his chest, and he fell to the floor, unable to balance on two legs any more. The sight and pain of his writhing body was far worse than the agony of the stone. The chaos pain seared all intelligence and reason from his mind, and he became a beast in form as well as spirit. Mund the Chaos Spawn raised his head and howled with horror and despair. Fuente * Suplemento Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (3ª Edición). Categoría:Relato Hombres Bestia Categoría:Pendiente de traducir